Hired Guns - Psygnosis RRP œ29.99-œ39.99
                   (RPG for Amiga and PC)

            Played by Steve McGuire on an A1200

Hired Guns is a first person perspective sci-fi RPG which can be
played by 1 to 4 people.  The tightly packed (but sturdy)
corrugated cardboard box contains 5 disks, 4 manuals and a copy
protection sheet.

The "Game Manual" outlines the basic game procedures and mission
options and objectives. There is also an extensive appendix which
describes how to use the wide array of equipment that is
available.

"Countdown To Graveyard" is a booklet which explains who your
characters are and what they are doing on the deadly planet of
Graveyard. As the game title states, the simple truth is that your
party of adventurers are a band of dispensable mercenaries that
have been sent on a mission to eradicate the biologically warped
inhabitants of Graveyard.  Each of the twelve available mercs has
a biopic and the characters are a mixture of humans, cyborgs and
robots. You have to select 4 of these dogs of war to make up your
actual combat team.

"The Luyten System" pamphlet contains a bestiary of some of the
foes you are going to encounter and another encyclopaedic list of
the weaponry available.  There's plenty of hardware to be had, but
this glossary is superfluous as there is an excellent enquiry
function on the character screens which details equipment
functions and ammunition requirements.  The bestiary turns out to
be quite limited and gives just a taste of what you will have to
face. It doesn't prepare you for the lethal nature of some of your
opponents, and it certainly didn't prepare me for an attack by a
band of rabid Dulux puppies in one of the training missions! Don't
worry though; there aren't too many silly indulgences.

The last pamphlet is the system specific user guide for loading
and playing "Hired Guns". There are lots of screen shots and
explanatory notes, although if you're anything like me, all you
really want to know is how to get started so that you can learn
"hands on" with the manual precariously perched open by the
monitor just in case.

The action screen consists of four first person perspective
monitors; one for each of the team members. Each character can
also access 3 supplementary screens : an inventory, a character
stats screen and an auto mapping screen.

Combat in Hired Guns simply requires you to centre crosshairs and
fire. Great care has to be taken not to get your team caught up in
your own crossfire though, as your characters will be damaged.
None of the convenient discriminatory fire you get in most other
RPGs. At one point in a game I blasted away at a distant figure
only to suddenly find one of the monitors going dead with a MIA
message. Oops!  This is infuriatingly realistic and makes you
wonder how common casualties from "friendly fire" in real
conflicts are.


Unlike DM style games, where one movement command shifts the whole
party as one, each character in Hired Guns acts independently. The
exception to this is the leader function which ties the movement
of 2 to 4 selected characters together.

In solo mode it can be difficult to control more than one
character at a time, and I found myself sending off individual
characters to clear out the enemy and leaving the rest of the
party to skulk in a safe place. However, characters that aren't
active don't get experience, so I had to rotate the characters
that went into combat.

The control system is generally intuitive, although there are a
number of niggling features. The movement controls are a bit
sticky, and they also don't allow you to move and fight at the
same time. No tactical fighting withdrawals with this game I'm
afraid.

You also can't drop more than one item at a time; so if you want
to temporarily ditch a load of gear then you have to go into the
equipment screen, drop an item, go back to the action screen, move
to an empty location, go into the equipment screen etc. What a
pain. Not like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Captive etc.
where you can dump as little or as much gear as you want in any
location.

N.B. Equipment runs the risk of being damaged if you drop it or if
you fall or make any jumps. If you make a habit of jumping into
pits or water then you'll soon notice your equipment list filling
up with piles of dust which are the unidentifiable remains of your
hard earned gear.

An interesting aspect of "Hired Guns" is that up to 4 people can
play at one time. Unlike networked Doom, however, everyone plays
on the same machine! This means that almost half of this 32 page
manual is dedicated to the wide range of mouse, joystick and/or
keyboard control combinations that are needed for the multi-player
options.  I am very sad to have to report that, to date, I haven't
been able to get anyone to help test out this area of the game.
I'm determined to do so though since my experience of interactive
computer games is that there is nothing to beat the deeply
satisfying thrill of zapping a close personal friend with a close
impersonal laser at close range.

I'm not very convinced as to how practical it is having four
people using just the one machine in a real time game. In a turn
based game then obviously it is a lot easier as each player can
get access in turn (surprise, surprise), but I look forward to
being proved wrong.

One piece of good news is that "Hired Guns" is hard drive
installable. This often only applies to Amiga and/or Atari games
that are too large and/or slow to run from disks. That is
certainly not the case with this game which is very playable on a
disk based system. In fact the speed of the game can almost be
overwhelming at times.

I have played "Hired Guns" with disks only, and you don't have to
swap disks very often at all. The initial loading process is quite
a bit slower than with a HD, but once you've got your team into
action you just have to worry about keeping your cash for killing
band away from the slimy folk. The frequency of disk swapping will
depend on how often you want to save your current position (oh,
and also on how often you have to load that last saved position
when you get wiped out). That's how games should be written.

Graveyard is made up of a number of different infested sites which
are shown on a large scrolling map. Access to sites is limited so
that you have to progress from the easiest sites upwards. Having
said that, the first location is pretty tough, and you will find
that combat, like the inhabitants, is fast and furious.

The game certainly has a lot of atmosphere with lots of background
noises and futuristic environments.  There are lots of great bits
of lethal weaponry which can be just as dangerous to the
uninitiated user as their targets. Grenades, lasers, rockets,
force fields, sonic blasters, medikits, scanners...they're all
here, so it's a bit of treat for sci-fi freaks.  I don't think
that this is a great game for a novice RPGer as you have to use
all kinds of desperate measures to survive the fireball spitting
and clawing attacks of the resident demons right from the the word
go, and the controls take some getting used to.  The learning
curve is more of a plateau. It starts tough and stays tough. This
makes for a good adrenal game though, and I would recommend it to
RPG fans.

Overall : 85%












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